the presidents of Parliament, voices of the oppressed

“Something died inside me on August 15, 2021, or at least that’s what I felt: my hopes were crushed, my education was for nothing (…). But I understood that there were still many women fighting inside the country. And I chose to be one of them. » These words are those of Nasima [son prénom a été changé pour des raisons de sécurité]a women’s rights activist in Afghanistan. After the Taliban took power, she decided to stay in her native country to defend women’s rights, at the risk of her life. “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. » This is the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. All human beings, that means: all girls and all women too. And yet, on their own soil, Afghan women are deprived of their fundamental rights and dispossessed of their humanity. In recent months, the latest decree on “the prevention of vice and the promotion of virtue” has driven the final nail into the coffin of women’s freedoms. From now on, they are forbidden from leaving their homes alone, from making their voices heard in public, from declaiming a poem. Their crime? To be a woman. Their fault? Exist. Girls and women are no longer allowed to sing; they already no longer had
full freedom to learn or teach. Afghanistan is now the only country to ban education for girls over 12 and women. According to UNESCO data, 80% of Afghan women of school age, or 2.5 million, are deprived of their right to education. Young Afghan girls cannot be deprived of a universal and fundamental right! Read also | Article reserved for our subscribers The Taliban prohibit Afghan women from singing, reading in public and traveling alone Read later Let us therefore not delude ourselves about the archaic and theocratic nature of the Taliban regime, which denies humanity and dignity of women. It is a crime, a systematic persecution based on gender which grates on all consciences, and in particular ours, as female politicians and presidents of the Assembly. But if Afghan women have become shadows on their own land, their now muffled voices must continue to carry and resonate in our Parliaments. For three years, our debates have echoed their fight. As during the first Summit of Assembly Presidents, which brought together twenty-four of us in Paris on March 6 and 7: we together reaffirmed our commitment to the right to education of Afghan women, and forcefully recalled that our Parliaments will always stand on the front line for women’s rights. You have 49.17% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.



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